THOM HARTMANN: Science Explains Why Republicans Can’t Accept Trump’s Guilt (Sept. 12, 2023)

Scientists discovered a fascinating reason why Republicans can’t accept criticism of Donald Trump. Thom explains.

In the above video, Thom Hartmann refers to a Raw Story column by cognitive neuroscientist Bobby Azarian, PhD (shown below):

Here are some excerpts from Azarian's column:

In 2009, a study published in PLOS ONE challenged our understanding of belief systems. Researchers placed participants into the confines of an fMRI scanner and presented them with a mixture of factual and abstract statements. The results were illuminating. Disbelief, it turns out, is cognitively demanding. It requires more mental effort than simply accepting a statement as true. From an evolutionary perspective, this preference for easy belief makes sense; a perpetually skeptical individual questioning every piece of information would struggle to adapt in a fast-paced world. What does all this have to do with Trump supporters? Well, it’s far less cognitively demanding for them to believe anything their leader tells them. Any challenge to what Trump tells them is true takes mental work. This means there is a psychological incentive for Trump loyalists to maintain their loyalty. (I wrote about this phenomenon in a slightly different context in the Daily Beast article "Religious Fundamentalism: A Side Effect of Lazy Brains?") Molding of belief: neuroplasticity at play Now, let's consider the unique predicament faced by individuals who staunchly support Trump and want him to again become president. From the moment Trump began his political career and his social engineering career, his supporters have been exposed to narratives — Trump doesn't lie, Democrats are communists, the media is an enemy of the people — that emphasize loyalty and trust in their political idol. These narratives often steer away from critical examination and instead encourage blind faith. When coupled with the brain's inherent tendency to accept rather than question, it creates an ideal environment for unwavering allegiance. No matter that Trump, time and again, has been revealed to be a serial liar, habitually misrepresenting matters of great consequence, from elections to economics to public health. For example, in the Psychology Today article "Why Evangelicals are Wired to Believe Trump’s Falsehoods," I explain that the children of Christian fundamentalists typically begin to suppress critical thinking at an early age. This is required if one is to accept Biblical stories as literal truth, rather than metaphors for how to live life practically and with purpose. Attributing natural occurrences to mystical causes discourages youth from seeking evidence to back their beliefs. Consequently, the brain structures that support critical thinking and logical reasoning don't fully mature. This paves the way for heightened vulnerability to deceit and manipulative narratives, especially from cunning political figures. Such increased suggestibility arises from a mix of the brain's propensity to accept unverified claims and intense indoctrination. Given the brain's neuroplastic nature, which allows it to shape according to experiences, some religious followers are more predisposed to accept improbable assertions. In other words, our brains are remarkably adaptable and continuously evolving landscapes. For ardent Trump supporters, residing in an environment that prioritizes faith over empirical evidence can reshape the neural circuits within their brains. [color emphasis added]

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Former President Donald Trump on Saturday flat-out called for the "termination" of the United States Constitution so that he could be returned to the presidency.

Reacting to the news that Twitter in the runup to the 2020 election removed tweets that featured pornographic photos of Hunter Biden, Trump declared that the entire election had been stolen from him and demanded to be returned to the presidency.

"So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION?" Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. "A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great 'Founders' did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!"

This is not the first time Trump has called for his reinstatement as president, although this is the first time he has acknowledged that doing so would require the United States to shred its own Constitution on his behalf.

New York Times reporter Peter Baker wrote on Twitter that this seems like a dangerous new milestone for Trump.

"Needless to say, can't think of a time in the United States when a former president (and would-be future president) has called for suspending the Constitution to let him seize power," he wrote. "Even after all the shocks of the last few years, this one is remarkable."

Chaotique call Aki to tease, prank call, and just be a general nuisance and Aki is annoyed by it

Aki : can't you behave for a minute, I'm talking to you on the phone with my family.

Chaotique : Or what ? You gonna spank me or something ?  *smirking*

Aki : *DONE* YES

Chaotique look bewildered as Aki cut off the phone call

Chaotique still shook and Aki don't care, he thought he did a good payback. Mini just cringe

How some media progressives talk about China is WILD

China’s going through a lot of protests and there’s reasons to criticize the Chinese government. There’s even arguments that the current protests, primarily about Zero COVID policies but also talking about censorship, have decent points at this stage in the pandemic. Those are worth considering and debating. But then you get something like this from a senior editor and “progressive Montanan” Bob Brigham:

This, is insane. On many levels. First, there’s no argument that China’s population numbers would fall significantly due to COVID. Estimates are about 5 million people would’ve died without the lockdowns they’ve done which is less than .4% of their population. Huge human cost! Not much change in population.

Second, as Naomi Wu points out, there’s no argument that China is uniquely overpopulated. Density as a whole is less than a number of European states, though some large provinces in the East like Guangdong are quite dense still in the 700/sq km range putting them at about 40% of Malta’s density (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1183370/china-population-density-by-region-province/). But true, density isn’t the only thing that matters. How about water resources? Well in per capita water renewable resources, China has a similar amount to the UK and about 60% more than Germany according to the World Bank (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ER.H2O.INTR.PC). China’s forest coverage as a percent of land area is similar to Belgium (https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/forest_area/). You could think of other things like per capita emissions and there’s none of that where China is substantially higher than European countries Brigham gives a pass for. Or hell, even some US states!

What this all adds up to is fairly blatant racism because now he’s not complaining about actions of the Chinese government but the existence of Chinese people. Which if anything I’d say China’s earlier one child policy and now more relaxed two child policies deserve critique for being unhelpful interventions when birth rates drop quickly and naturally from just urbanization and women’s education being combined...two things China’s proven quite good at in recent decades! And this is combined with unhinged hatred of lockdowns far in excess of where even the protestors have been at.

Chinese people in general were in favor of lockdowns and some still are (though that number has certainly dropped more recently)! That’s why you didn’t see these protests during the rest of the past two years of them. And the lockdowns were working until fairly recently as clearly shown by China’s extremely low death toll (a death toll that is likely pretty close to accurate or at least no more wrong than anyone else’s simply because hiding millions of deaths isn’t a thing governments have ever been able to do, there are too many different threads of information to control for that).

If you want to make arguments that lockdown policies have stayed in place too long, especially since widespread adoption of vaccines, that’s a point that’s worth considering. That’s what the protestors are arguing. But to say they were always anti-science is some crazy bullshit when it’s not just China that strict border controls and lockdowns worked in for well over a year. You’d also need to throw countries like Vietnam, New Zealand, and even Taiwan under that bus.

Lots of other folks make more reasonable and measured criticisms of China, some that are still OK to argue over and disagree with since even a reasonable take can be wrong, but guys like this are in prominent positions of our media apparatus. Which should probably also give people some pause in just what perspectives they get on China relying on even progressive news sources in the West.

Lawyer John David Dyche was recently asked to pre-write an obituary for Mitch McConnell to be published after his death. Instead, he wrote, McConnell’s role as an "amoral, purely transactional collaborator in the normalization of Trump’s cruel, proto-fascist, venal, and vulgar demagoguery will have even worse and longer lasting destructive consequences for our constitutional democracy."

APentagon official and a Harvard professor have theorized that mysterious aerial incursions could be alien probes from a mothership sent to study Earth, but an expert questions their findings, Politico reports.

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A Pentagon official authored an eyebrow-raising paper about an 'alien mothership'

APentagon official and a Harvard professor have theorized that mysterious aerial incursions could be alien probes from a mothership sent to study Earth, but an expert questions their findings, Politico reports.

European Southern Observatory / M. Kornmesser via NASA.gov© Raw Story

Sean Kirkpatrick, who heads the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, and Harvard professor Avi Loeb, coauthored a draft paper that asserts the objects “appear to defy all physics” and may be “probes” sent from an otherworldly “parent craft.”

The draft paper has not been peer reviewed.

Among the interstellar objects is the cigar-shaped “Oumuamua” that was seen in in 2017 soaring through the galaxy.

Oumuamua, which in Hawaiian means “a messenger that reaches out from the distant past,” was spotted by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope in Hawaii in October 2017.

i'm fully serious when i say that the scene where charlotte asks brimsley about him never marrying is one of my absolute favourites of the franchise.

like, she clearly knows nothing about him personally. why would she? and clearly, they're both equally lonely. clearly his line of "who could ever be free to spend a lifetime with me?" applies to both of them here. clearly, they're mirrors.

and equally, they're the ones they each spend their lifetime with. they're companions, they're bound forever, they care for one another deeply. but they're always divided, they'll never fully understand each other, they can't give each other what they both crave.

and neither of them can ever, ever say it. the closest they'll come is charlotte saying "you care for me" for him. because in the end, it's always brimsley reaching out and never touching to console her in that hallway and always charlotte turning around to ask him the most basic of details about him when they've both known each other for years and years and years.

Trump and his cronies have been claiming that Bill Clinton kept some tapes of interviews for a possible biography in his sock drawer after he left office. However, in a 2012 decision, the court determined that the tapes were Clinton’s personal property. In other words, they were NOT top secret classified documents like Trump took when he left office. Here’s the story:

Writing for the Maddow blog, [Steve] Benen recalled that while serving as president, Clinton frequently spoke with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tylor Branch, resulting in several tapes that were perhaps to be used as part of a memoir or biography. At one point, however, those tapes were stored in a sock drawer. [...] “[U]nmentioned by Trump’s defenders who began raising the issue of the sock drawer case last month is that Jackson’s ruling explicitly states that the Presidential Records Act distinguishes presidential records from ‘personal records,’ defined as documents that are ‘purely private or nonpublic character,'" CBS News reported.

Benen explained that the major difference is that Trump didn't merely take tapes of his conversations with a reporter, he took classified documents involving the nuclear capabilities of a foreign country as well as documents that were such a high level of classification that only Cabinet-level or higher could view them.

Benen explained, the two can hardly be compared.

A new CBS News poll is another to contribute to the narrative that there is something wrong with President Joe Biden's age while Donald Trump's age and mental fitness are going unquestioned.

But as a young voter and host of "iGen Politics," Victor Shi observed, the same poll shows a record 65% support for Biden among voters under 30. For voters between 30 and 44, Biden enjoys 56% support. The lowest amount of support for Biden comes from those over 65.

The official question read: "If next year's 2024 presidential election is between Joe Biden, the Democrat, and Donald Trump, the Republican, who would you vote for?"

Comparing it to Donald Trump, who had 35% for those under 30, 44% for those ages 30 to 44.

The poll also shows just how important abortion is to young voters. Nearly half of voters under 30 (47%) said that the issue of abortion makes them more likely to vote for Democrats. That compares to 27% who said the GOP stance makes them more likely, and 25% said it didn't matter.

When asked what qualities Americans want in a leader, they said tough (67%), caring (66%), no-nonsense (62%), calm (61%) and energetic (58%). When voters talk about Biden's qualities they see him as calm (63%), predictable (61%), caring (50 percent) and has him at "no-nonsense" just at 35%. By contrast Trump is viewed at 55% on "no-nonsense." That said, he didn't even register on "calm" or "caring."

As Shi assessed, "the media constantly talks about age but they fail to mention other positive things that polling shows — like that the Republican Party is weakening fast or more young voters say they will vote for Biden in 2024. These things also matter…just not to [the mainstream media]."

The toplines of the poll can be read here.

So another idea, it's like a love potion but for robots

Blastowoman unknowingly stole a USB that have a L.O.V.E virus in it, that virus can damage a robot by making their systems scrabble and mess up though it look like their dazed in a similar manner of falling in love. After Megaman stop Blastowoman, carry that USB drive and it automatically attach to him and start putting the virus like a Trojan virus, Mini confuse with what did Aki's system download and try to check it but mistakenly open the virus and making megaman system start jumbled up.

Chaotique was in the area megaman in, she approached him saying hi, right when the virus kick in, she start to worry but she don't want to touch him afraid she might catch whatever virus Megaman got. He relaxed for a second and lift his face as he see Chaotique, she ask if he is okay but then Megaman start flirting to her ?!

Chaotique see his heart eyes and just confused to what the heck ?

He keep following her and tease her, hug her and play with even thought she doesn't mind she know he is under a virus and afraid to get it. Megaman try to kiss her but Chaotique push him out of reflexes causing him to pass out, so out of guilt she bring him to Dr. Light told him everything she know what happen to him.

Rest of the episode making Aki lovesick for Felicia even as Chaotique and Chaotique confused to heck why 2 people like her. The Light family with some robot masters try to find the anti-virus for the L.O.V.E virus.

Chaotique definitely feel conflicted with who she likes more and start falling in love herself, naturally

Of course MTG defends an evil monster.  That’s her M.O. after all.  

As the author notes, there is no evidence (as yet) for what he is speculating. But it could be the plot of a great thriller. 

Conservative journalist John Solomon, who is one of Donald Trump's official representatives for the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), released a damning May 10 letter on his JustTheNews.com website.  https://www.salon.com/2022/08/23/self-inflicted-wound-release-of-damning-national-archives-letter-blows-up-in-his-face_partner/